A data center communicates with a cloud-based backup system. Client-server roles are established such that a client role is assigned to the data center and a server role is assigned to the cloud-based backup system. On an ongoing basis, backup operations are performed. In the event of disaster or other cause of an outage of the data center, a failover protocol might be invoked such that the cloud-based backup system takes on additional processing operations beyond the aforementioned backup operations. After remediation, the data center issues a data restoration message to the cloud-based backup system. The remediated data center initiates a failback protocol that reverses the client-server roles of the data center and the cloud-based backup system such that the server role is assigned to the data center and the client role is assigned to the cloud-based backup system. After performing system restoration operations, the roles may be reversed again.